biden just back from the far east will speak to the country about the 18 children and two adults murdered this day at rob elementary school in uvalde, texas. he'll talk about them and their deaths at the hands of gunman who himself is now dead. i want to go for the latest on what is happening, the latest from what we have learned from what happened at the rob elementary, ed lavandera begins our coverage tonight from dallas, what's the latest information you have. >> reporter: hello, anderson, well officials continue to work the scene. local school officials have not confirmed what has been widely reported by state officials that 18 children at rob elementary were gunned down today as well as three adults and the shooter is dead. school officials gone out of their way several times today to tell the community that this gunman acted alone, that the person that that suspect is now dead and no longer a threat, but it is too late for what this community is dealing with and grieving with. the governor of texas says about noon central time this lone gunman krdrove up to the school abandoned his car, went inside with a firearm, rifle, not exactly sure what weaponry was used but enough to inflict unspeakable carnage. many of the victims taken to two area hospitals, one in uvalde, another in san antonio, we understand there is a 66-year-old woman who is in critical condition, another young child there at the hospital in san antonio also in critical condition so the death total could change in the hours ahead. we pray those victims will be okay, but right now, law enforcement continues to work the scene there at the school and try to get to the bottom of what the motive might have been behind all of this and we do know the shooter is an 18-year-old male from the city of uvalde, or perhaps a uvalde highschool student and anderson, all of this comes at what is supposed to be a festive time. there were just a couple of days left in the school year for rob elementary and the school district, the high school was supposed to have its graduation ceremonies this weekend. essentially the school district in one of the brief statements they've made here this afternoon, anderson, saying the school year is over. everything has been canceled for the remainder of the school year and graduation ceremonies are up in the air. all of this happening as there are families right now as we speak trying to figure out if their loved one, if their children are the victims of today's grotesque shooting and that is what is unfolding in the city of uvalde, a small town of nearly 20,000 people or so just west of sani antonio. >> another question i have for you and i know there's a lot we don't know, it's still very early, school just given a press conference which they said very little, one of the things they're pointing out is that they're still notifying family members or i don't even know if they've begun the process of notifying family members so we want to be very cautious in our reporting. ed, what do we know about what family members know, have family members begun to be notified. >> reporter: we have seen some indications that some people have learned of the fate of their loved ones, of these children, but this is still, from what we can tell, very much an active scene and whether or not the bodies have even been able to be removed from the school is unclear at this point. obviously, the amount of work and investigative work authorities have to do there at that school at rob elementary, you can imagine how long and pain s painstaking that will be, so that is a process on going. we do know there was a reunification center set up at a civic centers for parent to see meet up with students, we saw buses taken away from the school presumably to the civic center and school officials say tomorrow morning, rob elementary school staff will be instructed to show up there. there will be grief counsellors on hand to help those through this situation and all of that taking place at the nearby civic center. >> we should point that often in situations like this, early reports that police get, that eye witnesses say, are, often prove to be inaccurate. people see things in a shooting like this, sometimes see multiple people when there's really only one so again, we're being cautious in what we're reporting. ed, is it clear what time this began? and how long it actually went on for? we know from past active shooter situations, often, though the person may not be killed until later on, that often, most of the victims will go in the first four to six minutes of an incident like th is it clear how long it's shooter was on the scene there? >> reporter: we have not heard reporting on an exact timeline but started all around noon central time, 1:00 eastern and some of my colleagues were reporting that the, this apparently started with the gunman shooting his grandmother at a nearby home and then moving toward the school and it is there that, at some point, after, presumably, this gunman inflicted the carnage inflicted inside the school, there was a number of law enforcement officers that showed up there at the scene, one of them was a customs and border protection officer and that is not uncommon, uvalde is a town relatively close to the u.s./mexico border so the presence of federal law enforcement agencies is not surprising in any way, it's actually very, very common. so the fact that a cbp officer might have been one of the first people to respond to this is not out of the ordinary. we are told that that cbp agent suffered a gunshot wound to the head, that it did not penetrate and is not life-threatening but gives you an indication of what was needed, what needed to happen there in the initial chaotic moments as law enforcement was respond to get the scene, but the exact amount of time this shooter was inside that school inflicting the carnage he was inflicting is not clear at this point, anderson. >> and obviously, a lot has been learned since caolumbine, and studies on all the active shooter situations, that has changed law enforcement tactics so that the first officers on the scene, no matter which agency they're from, their job is to go in as quickly as possible and try to stop the shooter so it's very common when you have, you talked about the border patrol agent, it's very common any outlaw enforcement officer from any agency will respond to something like this and whoever is there on scene first will usually go in together when the shooting occurred in washington dc, there were navy personnel, as well as bicycle police officers and others who were the first ones in. is it clear to you how quickly police were able to get on the scene? because that's also another critical critical thing in every kind of situation like this. >> reporter: right, it sounds like it was relatively quickly but obviously not fast enough to prevent what has happened here. i don't want to go beyond that, really, because we haven't really gotten any indication as to exactly, you know, how quickly agents were able to respond to that scene but, you know, uvalde is a small town. presumably, law enforcement was relatively nearby. >> ed lavandera, appreciate it, we'll continue to check in with you over the next two hours, on the phone right now, from public safety, inspector, i appreciate you talking with us tonight. what can you tell us about what has occurred here? >> first of all, our condolences to the families affected because of this shooting. but i do want to state there were two different incidents. the first incident was involving the suspect at their grandmother's residence where he shot the grandmother and then the grandmother was air-lifted and the second incident that came in, they call it'd in as a crash and man with a firearm you don't see, outside the school premises. law enforcement engaged the suspect but he was able to make entry into the school where he did go into several classrooms and unfortunately, he did fire his firearm inside the school premises but then he was met with another tactical law enforcement agency which ultimately were able to bring him down and that's, as we see, unfortunately, there is confirmation right now that there is 18 deceased children, or students, and two deceased adults. they dnidn't tell me female or male, but there are two adult victims. >> and sergeant, do you have more information on how many others were wounded? >> no, they told me right now, everything is preliminary so told me there are other, several children that did get injured and those are in nearby hospitals right now. so there were others, there were other people injured. >> sergeant estrada, i want to ask a couple questions and i know there are things you can't comment on and i certainly respect that. the two deceased adults, i'm assuming that does not include the shooter. correct? >> so from what we have right now, yes one of them is the suspect and then the other one is another adult. they didn't specify if it was a male or female but two adults deceased. >> there was also a law enforcement officer, i believe if i heard our correspondent correctly was shot, do you know his condition or her condition? >> right now, we don't have any conditions but as far as the confirmed deceased is, we only have two as of now. we are honoring, we are checking up with other law enforcement agencies affected by this shooting just to make sure the officers are okay but as of now, we don't have any additional deceased people that were inside the premises. >> sergeant estrada you mentioned, and because of the phone call, i'm not sure i heard it correctly, that prior to his entering the school, did you say, was your term an epic crash? >> yeah, so he did, the suspect did crash near a ditch nearby the school. that's where he exited his vehicle with, i believe it was a rifle and that's when he attempted to enter the school where he was engaged by law enforcement and unfortunately he was able to enter the premises and from there, that's when he went on, entered several classrooms and started shooting. >> do you know, was he being pursued by law enforcement, is that what precipitated the crash? >> no, as of now, there is no vehicle pursuit that got reported on our logs or on any other law enforcement logs but it is, of course, preliminary and as of now, it just got reported as a vehicle crash nearby the school. >> i understand that. you also said that the law enforcement engaged him prior to his entering the school. is it clear to you, were they aware he was trying to enter the school? was he engaging with them after the crash and then he ran into the school? again, i know it's preliminary and you may not have that information. >> right, so what got reported was a call of a man with a gun that had crashed nearby the rob elementary school. and then he was observed exiting the vehicle with his own rifle and a backpack. he also had a, had body armor with him. that's whenever the, i believe the isp police officers engaged him. then, there was a second call where he entered through the front door of the rob elementary school. he entered and that's when he started with his gunfire inside the premises. >> you said isd, i'm sorry, what does that stand for? >> so that's their school district police officers. >> got it. so those would have been people who were on the scene already at the school? >> that's correct. >> okay. do you have any idea how many isd officers were sooirassigned this school? >> no, i don't have that information. >> again, sorry to be so specific, just trying for our viewers to get as much as we understand. you said he had body armor with him, was he wearing the body armor? >> yes, he was. >> was that just a tactical vest he was wearing, a helmet, other forms of armor on him? >> so at least what they confirmed to me was that he was wearing body armor and that he was carrying some sort of rifle. we do have several agencies here that are assisting us with the investigation and that includes atf, fbi, and we also have our texas rangers out here and we're trying to figure out, you know, the details of the incident. >> when, do you have any idea how long or when other law enforcement units came to the scene? i assume the isd units were there already. do you know how quickly other units responded? >> no, sir, i don't have that exact time but i do have when the initial call came in, there was around 11:30. >> and that call, do you know who called that in? >> no. i don't. >> okay. do you know what kind of rifle it was? >> i won't, i don't have the rifle and that's why we have atf right now and they're doing that part of the investigation. we will have further information once the investigation starts revealing more details of the incident. >> do you know -- have all the families of the victims been notified at this time? >> i know we've been in contact with several families. we've also been in contact with some of the local officials here and other local agencies. so we're trying to take care of all that. some notifications have been made already. >> do you know the suspect who is deceased, was this person known to law enforcement? do you know at this stage? >> no. i don't know his history. >> and do you have any sense of, clearly, motive is something you wouldn't know or wouldn't even be able to comment on this stage. was there any history of police calls to his grandmother's house, is that something you would know at this stage? >> no, sir, i don't, that's pretty much all the information we have gathered as of now. we are going to be having further details down the road. >> okay, sergeant estrada, i appreciate your patience with my questions and appreciate all your efforts today and sorry it's under these circumstances. thank you so much. >> yes, sir, thank you. >> we are obviously following events -- there are obviously a lot of details we just learned from sergeant estrada, bring you j julia, andrew mccade, former analyst, worked with fbi, charles ramsey worked with police chief washington dc, and former assistant secretary of homeland security, analyst. andrew, first i'm wondering your reaction to sergeant estrada's details there. >> yeah, well i understand it's a rashble amount of detail we got from the sergeant and just shows you how much lift there is for us to understand as this investigation continues. the details about the, i guess he referred to it as an epic crash in front of the school, but not exactly at the school, right, he described it as being in or near a ditch or drainage ditch raises all kinds of questions about what started that -- what led to him driving a vehicle in such a manner that it got out of control that he crashed in a ditch. was he actually even intending to go to the school when he set out from the attack on his grandmother earlier in the day? so these, there's a lot of fact that is we just don't know here. i'm quite confident that the investigators are coursing through all these things as we speak and we'll certainly know more as the days go on but i think the best course is for us to kind of not jump to any conclusions about any of this right now. >> certainly, and i think, i mean a lot of details were very helpful that sergeant estrada was able to provide. chief ramsey, i'm wondering what stood out to you from what the sergeant was saying. >> well just like andy, it's a lot of information, but this will be coming out in bits and pieces. as time goes on, we'll know more and more. i think andy raised a very good point, and that is we don't even know if this was the intended target, this particular school, or was there someplace else he had in mind. i mean these are questions we just have, that haven't been answered yet, but more information will be coming out. i think right now, it's important that we wait until we start getting official comments being made so that we really are basing it on facts. i'm sure they're executing search warrants. they're going through his social media, and all kinds of things right now, just trying to piece things together to figure out exactly why he did what he did and why it may have been a red flag that could have been a warning even before today's events. julia? >> i want to just talk about what's going on now, because there's been a sort of lack of information, because i think it's important to be graphic. i think the word shooting can sound sanitary since we're dealing with them so often. 18 young children killed by a rifle that is meant to destroy, to maim. they are not carrying identification, very likely, at that young of age and they might not be recognizable. there are a lot of them, there are 18 of them. the police know which parents remain, who have not been reunified with their children so they know who the parents are, but now, each parent has to identify a child that may be unrecognizable and un, without identification and i think it's important to be direct about and specific and detail how ever horrifying this moment is for these families. because that's what these families are going through, and we will look to the motive and look to, obviously, guns and gun control, but we can't get sanitized to the horror of what's happening now. that's what the delay is. there's children who are unrecognizable, and only a parent, their parent can identify them and that's, you know, that's this moment, right now. >> and julia, on scene like this, and i know this only because we've covered other school shootings as well. >> yeah. >> it's very likely these children are still where they fell and will be for some time as this crime scene, as it is now, has to be documented and gone over. >> right. so we know from sandy hook, i mean look, we have history here. it's not like this is new. we know from sandy hook that the parents who remained into the evening were told that their children had not survived and they only knew this because you didn't have family unification, remember these are very young children at sandy hook. some unidentifiable. we don't know now, in texas, where the shooting exactly occurred. was it a single classroom, multiple classrooms? we have, i think, a teacher already dead so the teacher was not able to identify and that's essentially what's happening right now. so i was surprised how little information came out at the press conference earlier, we have the basic numbers, but part of that is, i mean, i'm going to be graphic here. they got 18 little bodies that are destroyed by really heavy artillery and the only person who knows is a parent. you know, and that's, that's, you know, that's today. >> julia kayyam, charles ramsey, to phil mattingly at the white house where the president is expected to speak at about 8:30 in about eight minutes. what are you hearing?